My Progress
My Progress
OR LACK OF PROGRESS AS OF LATE!
| I have played with numerous paint schemes over the years that I have been working on the plane but never could find one that I liked. I tried a number of similar designs but finally hit on the following after receiving my prop from Catto Propellors. The prop tip just flowed into the same lines and I redrew the paint scheme as shown. I know that I will have to refine it some as it is applied to the plane but I hope to be able to basics of the design intact. |
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| The plane was in storage for over three years but has recently been moved to a hangar in Lancaster Tx. I don't have the time or the money right now to make any substantial progress on it but I have started doing a little when time permits. My new workshop is shown below. Not real big but I can work on the wings and transportable parts while the rest is in the hangar. |
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| Main problem now is that the hangar is more than a hours drive from home. The electrical power service to the hangar consists of a single outlet and there is no water available. Other than that, the hangars are clean, have paved floors, and are very large. |
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| Progress, no matter how slow is progress and I am finally making some progress. One wing is closed, sealed, wired, wing tip installed, sanded and primed. Some of the steps are detailed in the wing section. The process is slow in the confined space of my workshop. I barely have room to get around the wing when it is laid flat for working on it. One end is against the shelves at the end of the room and there is just enough room to get around the other end since the wingtips were added. |
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| It has taken far more hours than I would have ever believed but the firewall is finally comming together. I think it is just about complete and ready to remount the engine and start the wiring. I decided to utilize two heater control boxes on the exterior and position them to disperse the heat at the pilots or copilots feet and under the floor board. This is similar to how the heaters work on cars. The problem issue turned out to be how to convert the pull for heat that I wanted for the control cable when the control box needed a push to open. I also didn't want the cables running all over the place behind the firewall. The solution turned out, like most custom changes, to take much more time than I ever thought it would. The end result can be seen in the photo. The idea was simple and in the end it works exactly as I had planned but it took four attempts before I finally got the correct setup. It converts the pulling action of the controls a push to open the air box control. There is also a third air control at the top which will control heated air input for the defroster. All three will work the same way. |
